Male Factor

Today I went deep behind the Orange Curtain to the free IVF seminar I had signed up for some time ago and figured why not go just for kicks?  It may be a route I take some day (whether for baby #1 or #2) and it’s free.

The group was predominantly Asian – apparently the innovations in mini-IVF and natural IVF, as well as vitrification (embryo freezing which has a very high survival success rate) have mostly been done in Asia, so this was the audience.  Most were couples of course, with a few women on their own who were obviously married but the husbands couldn’t/didn’t want to come.  The seminar didn’t tell me much I didn’t know already (a lot of discussion about what causes infertility, ideal hormone levels, and how reproduction works), but I did learn a couple of interesting things.

One was the preponderance of endometriosis among women with “unexplained infertility”.  It was this doctor’s opinion that most women who fall under this category have undiagnosed endometriosis.  Interesting.

The other was something that made me reconsider taking any form of IVF as a better option than IUI.  Apparently there’s no way to judge the viability of your embryos.  You can do genetic testing on them to see if the potential baby has a chromosomal disorder (mainly Down), but viability?  Nope.  Which I guess makes sense, otherwise IVF would nearly always be successful, and we know that it is not.  So your odds of forming “good” embryos that still aren’t viable is just as likely as with any other method.  Somehow I thought just to see an embryo form was proof that it was likely to survive.  Not at all.  You are ensuring egg meets sperm, yes, and placing the embryo in the right place.  But beyond that there’s no guarantees, especially for older women with fewer viable eggs.

Which really makes me think, when considering the high cost of any kind of IVF (even totally non-medicated, natural cycles run $3000), that for someone like me, for whom IUI had been successful once, it may not be worth it.  If I have another loss I’d rather spend the money on testing to make sure there’s no obvious reason my babies aren’t surviving – but the odds are it’s just a numbers game at my age; you just have to wait until the viable one comes down the tube.  Which could be a long wait.  However, would you rather spend $1000 a cycle waiting for that good egg, or $3000 + a cycle, to get the same results?  Since I have no “male factor” (a good reason to do IVF) it really makes me think no matter what the outcome of this IUI, or even the next, that IUI may be the way to go, for financial reasons.  Like it or not, short of meeting some guy in a bar, this is the cheapest way to go.

Speaking of guys in bars, so as with any group you may find yourself in, there had to be the one pain-in-the-ass white trash guy who talked to his wife through the whole thing and insisted on loudly yelling out “aren’t I dumb” fake answers to all the questions, which then prompted the annoyed Asian guy in front of me to correct him in a very loud, bored-sounding voice.  He seemed like kind of a dick, too, to be honest, and his mood didn’t improve no matter how many times his super cute young wife laid her head on his shoulder.  $50 says their problem is male factor.

All of this gave me the idea to make a T shirt when I have a big pregnant belly that says “I Didn’t Settle for Some Idiot”.  I’m going to do it, I swear!  And make it my Facebook profile picture.  Taking bets now on whether or not I’ll have the balls to do it.  I can spend the money on cloth diapers.